St. Dale

may be a song like that about NASCAR, for all I know.”

“Tracks of Gold,” murmured several voices in unison.

Bill sighed. It figured. “I don’t know what heaven will be like,” he went on. “The Bible offers a number of images, which, since we are human, may be beyond our comprehension. I do know that the idea of having an eternal place for heroes is a very old tradition throughout human civilization. The Greeks thought that ordinary people crossed the river Lethe and forgot about their earthly existence, but that heroes went on to the Elysian fields with their earthly personalities intact. The Norsemen envisioned the Valkyries swooping down to the battlefield to take fallen heroes back to Valhalla for an eternity of mead and feasting with their comrades. I’m not sure what kind of afterlife I can envision for race car drivers. To me it seems a contradictory proposition at best: trying to accommodate many different people’s dreams of heaven when some of those ideas conflict with others. I think of all the fans who yearn to shake Dale Earnhardt’s hand when they get to heaven, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be much of a heaven to Earnhardt himself if he had to stand around all the time glad-handing strangers. I suppose that if God has set aside a part of His kingdom for heroes, it will be a wonderful place. What that place would be like- well, I’ll leave that to God, because He’s wiser than we are, and I’m sure He’ll manage to sort out all the contradictions. The one thing I am sure of is that if there is a place up there reserved for heroes, Dale Earnhardt is bound to be in it. Let us thank God for the gift of him, and rejoice in his translation to…” What was the phrase they’d used? “…to Tracks of Gold.”

After the visit to the memorial garden in Talladega, Ratty backtracked the ten miles or so to the Interstate, and deposited the pilgrims in a hotel at the Oxford exit on I-20 just east of the Speedway turnoff. In the waning hours of daylight about half the group had gathered at the hotel’s tiny outdoor pool, although only Shane and Matthew were swimming.

Terence Palmer sat at a white metal table some distance from the rest of the group, talking into his cell phone. “No, Mother, I’m fine, really. Lovely weather. A bit warm, but that’s only to be expected this far south. You sent me a package? No, it didn’t reach me before I left New York. What was it? Oh, a book about an Irish princess. Ah, your book group loved it. Well, I don’t have much time for reading this week anyhow. No, Mother, no one in the group chews tobacco or wears overalls. By the way, have you ever heard of Nash Furniture? Really? On a waiting list for a china cabinet? Really? Oh, no reason. Well, I have to go, Mother. Love to Merrill. Bye.”

He closed the cell phone with a sigh.

Chapter XVII

The Changing of the Guard

Atlanta Motor Speedway

The journey from Talladega to the Atlanta Motor Speedway would take only a couple of hours, mostly backtracking I-20 to Atlanta and then south on I-75 to Henry County. Since they had passed this way the day before, there was a monotony to the landscape now, and Karen McKee took the paperback out of her purse, because she felt like reading another chapter in the novel about the princess in ancient Ireland. I am reading a book on my honeymoon, she thought. How weird is that. If anybody had told her six months ago that a few days after the wedding she would want to read a book or write a postcard to her mother instead of hanging on Shane’s every word, or holding his hand hour after hour, she would have laughed in disbelief. But it was true. It wasn’t that she loved Shane any less. She couldn’t imagine life without him. It was just that having got the wedding out of the way, there were new things to worry about, and reading was a good way to keep from worrying about them for a while, as long as she ignored the fact that her bookmark was an acceptance letter from East Tennessee State University.

Well, at least they’d be in Florida tomorrow. People actually did go to Florida on honeymoons. Maybe there’d be time to spend a couple of hours on the beach. She wished she could talk Shane out of visiting Daytona-skip the Speedway and come to the beach instead. That wasn’t going to happen, though. Shane had come to pay his respects to Dale, and in his view the holy of holies was the track where he’d died. There was no getting away from it. Maybe it would be all right. So far Harley and the other passengers had been telling stories about races that happened ages ago. They’d hardly said a word about NASCAR-A.D. After Dale. Maybe it wouldn’t come up. She knew she should sit Shane down and talk to him about it. Time he knew. What kind of a world was it when you had to choose between lying to somebody you loved or breaking their heart? Dale had been dead eighteen months now. Time to move on. Start watching racing again, instead of watching old videos of Dale’s old races when the new season was on television. Why couldn’t he just pick a new driver to root for-Matt Kenseth maybe, or Jamie McMurray, who looked like Hollywood’s idea of a really nice guy. She had a feeling that they would never get to the future until Shane let go of the past.

So far, so good, Harley Claymore was thinking. He had managed to get through this much of the tour without losing any passengers to heatstroke, making any egregious mistakes in his racing trivia, or pissing anybody off by voicing his opinions on the new face of NASCAR. He had been trying to decide what to say about the Atlanta Motor Speedway-beyond remarking on the obvious-that it wasn’t actually in Atlanta, but about thirty miles south of the city in Hampton, Georgia. Of course, at the rate Atlanta was spreading-like architectural kudzu-it wouldn’t be long before the city sprawl engulfed the rural areas between city and Speedway, so that it would indeed be in the suburbs. He noticed that a new development-something called “Liberty Square Park” was going up across the road from the Speedway.

The track was located on Tara Road. Harley had thought up half a dozen sardonic remarks to make about that, but discarded them all not only for the sake of harmony but also because he realized that the old NASCAR with its strictly Southern tracks and its mostly Southern drivers had been a low-rent sport, forcing its competitors to work day jobs just to stay in the game. He had to admit: if he ever got a ride again, he’d be grateful enough for the new NASCAR glory days and the chance to make a million dollars in one season.

“Okay, folks,” he said, seeing the S &S Food Mart across from the Speedway-his cue to begin his spiel. “We’re here. Sorry, Bill, but I have this note card that says I have to spout a few stats at you.”

Justine rolled her eyes. “This is like when the stewardess goes through the safety rigmarole. Let us do it. Size of track, somebody!”

“Mile and a half!” said Jim Powell and Ray Reeve in unison.

“Banking? Anybody?”

“Ummm…Almost flat on the straightaways, maybe 25 degrees in the turns,” said Shane McKee. “They can go really fast on this track. They repaved it about five years ago, and the new surface really helped speeds.”

“Anybody want to guess who holds the track qualifying record?” asked Harley.

“Petty!” said Cayle and Sarah Nash.

“Earnhardt!” said a chorus of male voices.

“Geoff Bodine!” said Bekasu.

Harley stared at her. “I thought you didn’t know anything about racing.”

“No, I’ve been observing you,” she said. “And you’re partial to Geoff Bodine.”

Harley sighed. “He is my brother in adversity,” he said. “All work and no damn breaks.”

They turned in at the house-shaped Atlanta Motor Speedway sign, which bore an enormous Coca-Cola sign on its right side-a fitting display, as Justine noted, because Coca-Cola was headquartered in Atlanta.

“This is another speedway with condos,” said Harley, pointing to a soaring modern building that put him in mind of Star Wars. “Tara Place Condos. So if you have a couple of hundred thousand dollars to spare, you can watch the Georgia 500 in style, come October. Some serious money here, I don’t have to tell you.”

The bus came to a stop in the parking lot, and Harley raised a hand to stop his stampeding troops. “Okay, we’re going to be a little rushed on this stop, just because it’s so damn far to Daytona from here. Wreath first. Then tour. Then gift shop. Got it?”

They nodded.

“Whose turn is it?” asked Cayle.